🌈 Pride Month: Book Recommendations🌈

Ever thought what would the world be without stories? What can be better than a journey to the world that lies between the pages animated with wonderful characters with whom you identify. Reading their journey eliminates your doubts, gives you assurance and strength to explore yourself and accept yourself the way you are. Stories that unify, that make you believe that you are not the only one out there.

It is a world weaved carefully by someone to resonate with your feelings.

B O O K S - have always been the magic portal to step into a dimension of fantasy, feeling and a flourishing universe of imagination. Many revolutions brought around have been aroused initially through pen and paper, before making its way into reality. This world of words holds power and beauty alike.

This pride month, let us break away from the shackles of stereotypical judgments and set forth on a journey to rediscover ourselves! All through this queer yet fascinating realm of words.

E x c i t i n g ain't it? 

The task is simple! Suggest and recommend books that revolves around the LGBTQ+ community. You can also state a line or two about them and also your experience while reading it.

Here, we'll make the first move for you.

Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin

Is a novel that has resonated with the queer community since it was first published decades ago, a young man finds himself caught between desire and morality in 1950s expat Paris. While much has changed since Baldwin wrote it, many aspects of life, love and heartbreak remain the same. 

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous By Ocean Vuong

Poet Ocean Vuong’s debut novel is a shattering portrait of a family, a first love, and the redemptive power of storytelling. With stunning urgency and grace, Ocean Vuong writes of people caught between disparate worlds, and asks how we heal and rescue one another without forsaking who we are.

Fairest by Meredith Talusan 

Fairest is a memoir about a precocious boy with albinism, a “sun child” from a rural Philippine village, who would grow up to become a woman in America. Throughout her journey, Talusan shares poignant and powerful episodes of desirability and love that will remind readers of works such as Call Me By Your Name and Giovanni’s Room. Her evocative reflections will shift our own perceptions of love, identity, gender, and the fairness of life.

Leaving Isn’t the Hardest Thing by Lauren Hough

At once razor-sharp, profoundly brave, and often very, very funny, the essays in Leaving Isn’t the Hardest Thing interrogate our notions of ecstasy, queerness, and what it means to live freely. Each piece is a reckoning: of survival, identity, and how to reclaim one’s past when carving out a future.

Boy Erased by Garrard Conley

Through an institutionalized Twelve-Step Program, Garrad Conley was supposed to emerge heterosexual. Instead, even when faced with a harrowing and brutal journey, Garrard found the strength and understanding to break out in search of his true self and forgiveness. 

No One Else by Siddharth Dube

The first gay memoir by a solitary author to release in Indian English, this book charts the story of Siddharth as he navigated the choppy waters of his sexuality, starting at the age of ten and onwards. As his life unfolds and he deals with the realities of being a part of a minority community after living a life of privilege, he discovers what it means to be happy in one’s own skin, and how one comes to accept themselves for who they are.

Mohanaswamy by Vasudhendra (tr. Rashi Terdal)

A dangerously blunt book that deals with loss of love and bullying, Mohanaswamy ties together Karnataka and the beliefs of the western world, as Mohanaswamy deals with losing a male lover to a woman and wanting to lead the simple life he sees the ‘normal’ people around him lead. 

A Life Misspent by Suryakant Tripathi Nirala (tr. Satti Khanna)

A memoir by one of the most celebrated Hindi writers, Nirala, talks about a Dalit homosexual, Kulli Bhat, with whom the author forges an unlikely friendship. Crossing boundaries of conventional sexuality and caste based politics, this unputdownable book is an experience, simultaneously hilarious and touching.

Wait no more and jump aboard!

Well much like Charity, reading too begins at home! Presenting to y'all, our own inhouse plethora of stories, bringing a lot of pride to this colorful month!

We are featuring these stories for a week in the Fan fiction Section, so that you do not miss out on them

You will also find the whole list here: https://www.indiaforums.com/fanfiction/chapter/18382

Write-up: Mannmohanaa and Viswasruti

Proof-read by:  asmaanixx

Color Coding and Tags: Leenaaa